Five BJP leaders including UP CM Yogi Adityanath are set to be elected unopposed to the UP Legislative Council. (Photo fro FB of UP CM Yogi)

Five BJP leaders including UP CM Yogi Adityanath are set to be elected unopposed to the UP Legislative Council. The four BJP leaders other than Yogi are Keshav Prasad Maurya, Dinesh Sharma, Mohsin Raza and Swatantradev Singh. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, his two deputies and two ministers are all set to be elected unopposed to the UP Legislative Council – the reason is that no other candidate is in the fray for the bypolls to the five vacant seats in the upper house.

“The process of filing nominations today ended at 3.00 pm and barring these five candidates, no one else filed their nomination papers,” Principal Secretary (state assembly) Pradeep Dubey, who is also the returning officer said. “Since there is no other candidate, their victory is a foregone conclusion. Once the nomination papers are found in order during scrutiny tomorrow, their election will be formally announced,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Adityanath and his ministerial colleagues filed their nomination papers in the presence of their cabinet colleagues and senior party leaders, including newly-appointed BJP state unit chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.

Of the five seats for which bypolls will be held, four were vacated by SP MLCs Buqqal Nawab, Yashwant, Sarojini Agarwal and Ashok Bajpai. The fifth seat fell vacant when Jaiveer Singh resigned from the BSP and joined the BJP.

All of them have to be elected to either the Assembly or the Legislative Council before September 19 in order to continue as ministers.